Had a good time at the competition, but a rough day calling. Had trouble getting my calls to run right. Spent all week geting my calls ready and practicing. Making sure they'd play easy and sound good, only to be eliminated by some bad chalk. I was running low on chalk, so I stopped at the sport shop and picked up another stick of chalk, so I'd have some to take along with me. Tuned the calls all up Friday and put the new chalk on them, so everything was ready to go. Randy came by friday night and wanted to hear how I tuned them, we pulled them out and started to play a little. Oh Boy Huge Suprise, they wouldn't play at all, not a note. That chalk greased the tongues up so bad we couldn't get a single note out of them, not even a squeak. It was just like somebody waxed the surfaces So I spent until about 2 am sanding and resanding the tongues, trying to get rid of that crapy chalk. I thought I had it sanded good enough to make the calls play good, but if you watched the live feed of the contest you heard how well they played . The more you played them the more the strikers would skip, so I couldn't play any soft talk at all, and trying to purr was a nightmare, all it would do is squeal, so scoring was not going to be good . I've used K&H and Quaker Boy chalk for years on my box calls, and knew they had good chalk. I like K&H better, but could only find the Quaker Boy Trukey-Thug chalk, so that's what I got. Never again, that stuff is some bad chalk!!! it soaks into the wood and you can't hardly sand it off, once you play on it, the heat created from the friction soaks it into the wood, it's like it's a grease, but yet it's dry as can be when you put it on? I'd hate to see what it'd do to a box call if it soaked into the rails, there is no way you could sand it enough to get it out, without ruining the call . I'm not one to bash a company, BUT if they've changed something for worst I believe in letting people know about it . Even the guys that I let run the call after the competition asked what kind of chalk was on there? They all said the same thing that Quaker Boy used to be some of the best chalk on the market?

Yeah, was not a happy camper after that happened. It was like you were playing in slow motion, you could move the striker and nothing came out of the call, it was like trying to play a pot call with a wet striker! I was using every inch of the tongue I could to make it play. As you can see in the video, watch how much I was working the striker just to make it play, and with these you only have to move the striker about a 1/16" to make it play, just wiggle it.

The type of chalk is one of the drawbacks I noticed with the teasers. Mine are very picky on the chalking. The chalk you gave me works great. You said that was Crayola which does not work on my other wood friction but works great on the teasers. All of the special greaseless box call chalks I have used for many years do not work on the teasers. This makes me wonder if there is something different in the manner used to grind the chalk during manufacture.

Too bad this happened to you during competition. I still think these teasers are GREAT calls. On Saturday I called in a couple of gobblers that were fluttering around eating buds in some treetops. Vic and I were by some wild grapes blow downs, turkeys love wild grapes; so we moved off a little and I called them into grape vine blow down. They flew in and started eating away, paying us no attention as we walked off. Although, Vic thought his master had totally lost it- "What no gunfire!?"

later, charlie If you agree with me call it fact; if you disagree - call it my opinion. After all - we are talking turkey.

The crayola chalk is a railroad chalk that has a hard surface on it to keep your fingers from getting colored. Dixon Chalk handles it, and also carpenter chalk and railroad chalks which are all greaseless. I contacted them this morning to see if I could get some more of their RED CHALK, red is the best sounding chalk, not sure why? They said they could no longer get Red Chalk, the suppliers no longer make it in a carpenters chalk, but they had the Red railroad chalk in 4" x 1" sticks for $11.50 a box (72 sticks).Yeah charlie, each different grade of chalk uses a different grind grade and some chalks work a lot better than other depending on what grade they ground it up with? So when you buy a call from a builder, find out what chalk they're using on their calls, so you use the same, otherwise you may have, problems running the call if you use a different grade of chalk?Carpenter chalk is a very fine grade of chalk that doesn't build up on a box call, so it's great for that, but it doesn't last real long.Railroad chalk is a bit thicker grade of chalk, which is why it works better on the tongue calls, because on a tongue call you striker point is so small, not like a box call lid, so it eats up the chalk faster. If you use a carpenter chalk on it, then it will glaze up faster and not play as good or as long, if that makes sence to ya'll.Now one thing I can't explain is why one color works better that the next? It's the same chalk made by the same company, but one color plays better than the next? With the Crayola chalk the best sounding colors are the DARK, RED--BLUE--GREEN, if you tried the yellow or white or orange, they don't sound half as good? No explanation why they just don't.